Crossed

by J. F. Lewis

  Pressure eased on my chest. My ribs healed as the massive paw lifted, but Asian Guy winced at the unavoidable pressure increase that resulted.

  “You smell nice for a big dog.” I rubbed my chest, but made no move to rise.

  “Garnier,” he answered. “Now be quiet.”

  Deacon stood to the wolf’s left in balls-out werewolf fashion. Even so, he looked cowed. The surviving Apostles were with him (two on his side of Megawolf and three on the other side).

  “Master Ji.” Megawolf lifted his paw, and an unrestrained wheeze escaped the man’s throat. “Explain.”

  “The vampire charged the Head of Scrythax.” He coughed, but it was a spark of energy, not blood, that escaped his lips. “We couldn’t let him take it.”

  “I was only talking to the damn thing—”

  A gargantuan wolf paw to the chest shut me up. “Why are you speaking? I asked Ji.”

  “Impossible.” Master Ji was looking better by the second. His ribs had healed, shifting back into place without any outside assistance. Neat trick. “We did not hear it speak. Scrythax is all but dead; he could not have—”

  “And yet”—Megawolf didn’t actually have to stomp Ji to get him to quiet down again; a simple shift of the leg was all it took to make Ji’s mouth slam tight—“I believe him.”

  The wolf shifted its gaze to the other immortals, who were slowly regrouping near the pedestal. “Oddvar!”

  The old, morbidly obese immortal stepped forward. “Oui, la Bête?”

  “Convey my apologies to Isaac. I ingested his paladin.”

  The fat man cringed. “Did you—?”

  “Soul-battle? No.” The wolf chuffed. “He will re-form. Digestive processing is unpleasant for immortals, but survivable. Ask Master Ji.”

  “This thing ate you once?” I tentatively moved to rise, making it a slow, deliberate motion. I do understand the idea of respecting power, and as far as I could tell, this thing had single-pawedly slapped me down in full-blown raging blackout uber-vamp mode, and I really didn’t want to make it mad. I would if I had to, because I’m me, but still . . .

  “Twice.” Ji looked away, face blanched. The tang of fear rose off him in waves, and the Megawolf loosed a barking noise that could have been a laugh.

  “Unnecessary fear, Ji.” Gripping the immortal gently with his fangs, the wolf pulled Master Ji into a standing position and gave him one brief lick on the face. “No need to repeat the lesson. You understood on the second pass.”

  “Merci, la Bête.” Ji bowed low.

  “What’s a soul battle?” Beatrice asked that one. The immortals flinched.

  Aarika opened her mouth to explain, but Megawolf’s response silenced her.

  “No.” He held his head high, puffing himself up in a way. “My time is not for wasting.” He turned his head to Luc, who was in the midst of reattaching his own head. La Bête waited while the flesh melted together and the wound healed. “Explain.”

  “Explain?” Luc asked, rubbing his throat and testing the mobility of his newly healed neck.

  “Oui.”

  “Explain what, la Bête?”

  I’d compared Megawolf’s roar to a thunderclap, but the rumble was reminiscent of an earthquake. It shook the walls. “Idiots!” The creature’s teeth receded painfully, blood flowing from its open mouth in a thick stream. Bones cracked and reknit themselves, filling the room with a sound like oaks creaking in a hurricane. He roared again as its hair withdrew in random patches. Its muzzle shortened and its digits both grew proportionately longer and shrank, bulging awkwardly as the claws receded, forcing the skin to stretch to accommodate it and only then shrinking.

  When it was done, a male in human form knelt where the wolf had been. He rose, revealing himself to be quite tall, close to seven feet. Nude at first, he covered himself as an afterthought, summoning what looked like some sort of historical hunter’s attire, all leathers and fur, the same way I’d seen other immortals produce arms and armor. There was still a wrongness. In the same way that normal werewolves look fake, he felt wrong. It took three seconds for me to find the source of the problem. His shadow wasn’t human. It still matched the size, proportions, and shape of his Megawolf self.

  Deacon and the other Apostles averted their gazes.

  “Do I have to wear your form”—the words came from his mouth this time—normal words, yet accompanied by a telepathic echo of the voice I’d heard before—“and speak with this?” He gestured to himself with obvious disgust. “Must I draw out my meaning and make puzzles in your minds so that you can comprehend what should be obvious?”

  “Mea culpa, la Bête,” Luc began.

  “The next man who names me, I will eat.” Megawolf crossed the room and seized Luc by the throat. “I feel it when you name me. It touches my spirit. I will not be defined by words. I am not words. I am form and spirit and hunt. Do you understand, Luc?”

  “Oui.” He barely caught the “la Bête” but he kept it in.

  “Now. In words that will pass these ears”—he tapped the side of Luc’s head with an index finger—“and be understood, here”—he thumped Luc’s forehead. “Why did you allow an Emperor vampire to enter Paris?”

  “You do not wish him to remain?” That was Aarika. “We’ll remove him at once—”

  Megawolf cut her off with a look.

  “I expressed no such opinion.” His gaze shot to me and then back to Luc. “I already know why I allowed it. Now, I want to know why you did and why you brought him to your beloved demon-god.”

  “He has a right to be in Paris.”

  “No.” Megawolf’s spoken words were soft, but the matching telepathic message was a shout. “No more Emperors. I said as much when Lisette was accepted. Did you think my mind had changed because a few thousand moons had passed?”

  “But he wants to kill Lisette,” Luc protested. “Surely that—”

  “Close.” Megawolf grinned and the expression overstretched the natural boundaries of his lips. “If you had said you did it because he is kin, because of your family curse, Luc, then I would have understood.”

  “Family? Curse?” True bewilderment touched Luc’s eyes. He really didn’t know. “He’s no relation of mine. The seventh generation of Courtneys would have died off years ago.”

  “You are a poor ancestor, Luc,” he snarled, “and a blind one. Can you not see the touch of Scrythax on his spirit? What magic is as old and pure as the curse of an Infernatti? Do you not see the piece of Scrythax which blazes in his heart?” Megawolf paused. “I see that you do not. Ah, you swore on the demon’s head. It has altered your senses. Of course it would.”

  “Can you go back to being all shut the fuck up and eatin’ people?” I shook my head, struggling to stand, “‘cause I was interested when you were a Megawolf. But the Tall Hairy Guy who runs his mouth and acts all pissy is just annoying.”

  Maybe it’s that I’ve never been the tallest guy in the class. Maybe that’s where my mouth came from. Could be that I was just too brain-addled to keep my mouth shut. A trickle of cool went through my body, leaving traces of warmth in its wake, and it didn’t feel like Rachel’s magic. It was cold and pure. Scrythax. The stupid demon was trying to calm me down, but that had been my problem all along. Sober, I overthink things. I worry about details. But buzzed—altered—I might do damn near anything.

  “I’m talking to the immortals, vampire.” Tall Hairy Guy gave a dismissive wave as if he were flicking me away with his hand, which put him just within arm’s reach.

  “Round two.” I had no vampire speed, no red-eye glow. It wouldn’t come. But my strength is always there. I grabbed his wrist and yanked him off balance with a good solid tug. Eyes wide, Tall Hairy Guy gave me a satisfying “oof” as I folded him over my knee with a sharp knee spike to the stomach. I rammed the knee home once, twice, three times, my strength giving me the power to overcome his larger shape.

  I let him drop to his hands and knees, then followed up with a kick aimed at his
head. He caught my leg. Which was fine with me, because who wants a one-sided fight? I wasn’t even particularly mad at him. I was frustrated and tired of the talking and I wanted to beat on somebody. He’d drawn the lucky number.

  “It’s been a century or more since I fought in human form.” Tall Hairy Guy shoved me backward. His position gave him superior leverage, and I didn’t even fight it. I saw a smile vanish from Deacon’s face as Tall Hairy Guy began to fight back. So Deacon didn’t like la Bête du Gévaudan? If he wasn’t happy, then maybe I was attacking the wrong person.

  “Shall we make things interesting, vampire?” la Bête asked.

  “In what way?”

  He stood, ducking to the side to avoid a jab I’d launched at his face, and followed with a punch of his own. I felt like a guy in one of those disaster movies where they know the asteroid is going to hit Earth and it’s too late to do anything but take it on the chin and hope you make it. In human form, he wasn’t as strong as I expected, but a good solid shot to the cheek, just under the eye, is never fun, and in boxing, it’s kind of the sweet spot.

  Blood sprayed out of my mouth, but the pain was brief. From a pure endurance standpoint, vampires have the edge in hand-to-hand combat. Even so, I saw spots before my eyes.

  “No claws. No fangs. No powers. No shifting. Hand-to-hand.”

  “Speed?” I put the question out there and let it hang.

  “I said no powers.”

  “Yeah.” I caught myself talking with my hands. “But I don’t always have a good handle on controlling mine.”

  “If you can get it to work this far away from your memento mori?” He gestured, too, weighing the options in his hands as if they were physical things. “Sure.”

  “I’m in.”

  Around us, stunned immortals looked on. Beatrice knelt by Tabitha, and I smiled when one of the immortal crowd responded to her unspoken request for help moving my day-struck bride. They carried her to a set of chairs I hadn’t seen and laid her across them. While I was watching that, la Bête du Gévaudan hit me with a combo of rabbit punches followed by an uppercut that lifted me into the air like a cartoon boxer and sent me sprawling toward the pedestal.

  A human throat shouted, “You idiots!” My back struck the pedestal and I felt the thing begin to topple. Time slowed, and the common inrush of breath sounded low and slow to my time-dilated perceptions. It was the sound of immortals getting ready to act. My heart sprang to life, and Scrythax spoke in my head.

  “Interesting.” If he’d been a cat, I’d have accused him of purring. “You’ve learned to draw on the Stone to assist you in the absence of your memento mori.”

  “Yeah.” I grabbed the head as it fell from the podium. “I’m all clever and shit.” I think I meant to set it back on the pedestal and tell the immortals to chill out. Instead, my lips drew into a hard tight smile as I shifted my grip from a horn to the base of the skull, and I threw the Head of Scrythax at la Bête du Gévaudan.

  37

  ERIC:

  TIME OUT FOR BAD BEHAVIOR

  Time stopped again, and in midspin the Head of Scrythax decelerated into a languid roll. He smiled at me, the rows of teeth clicking shut in a disconcerting lack of unison. “Better?”

  “Dude.” I tossed up my hands. “I’m just trying to fight a fucking hairy-ass immortal werewolf here. I threw you at him. Why can’t you just hit him like a normal decapitated head?”

  “Very well.”

  Time sped up again and Scrythax slapped against Megawolf’s chest, one horn digging into his flesh. Did that count as a weapon? Fuck!

  “Wait. Shit.” I made a T with my hands, signaling a timeout. “Decapitated demon heads count as a weapon. My bad.” I held my arms out to either side of me. “You get a free shot with the Head of Scrythax.”

  “He certainly does not,” Oddvar (I think Oddvar was the big fat one) shouted. “This has gone far enough!”

  Megawolf burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter, rapid bark-like bursts, punctuated by huge inhalations of air. “Fine.” He wiped his eyes, still laughing, struggling to speak between chortles. “Take him and”—he withdrew the head, shaking with laughter, close to dropping it—“put him back on the pedestal. Protect the demon god, Oddvar. By all means.”

  “Maybe we should take this outside?” I suggested as Oddvar stormed across the room and took the head away from Megawolf. The immortal brushed past me and set Scrythax reverently back in his spot atop the pedestal.

  “No.” La Bête grabbed Deacon’s shoulder. “No, I think we’d best leave things as they are. I must resolve my business and be on my way. Apologize to the vampire,” he commanded the werewolf.

  What?

  “I apologize.” Deacon choked on the words.

  “For what do you apologize?” la Bête prompted as I opened my mouth to ask the same sort of thing.

  “I apologize for invading your territory.” He looked at la Bête as if he might challenge him, but thought better of it and shifted his gaze to the floor again. “On two separate occasions, my disciples and I disregarded the truce between you and William, the governing Alpha. We did so without rightfully challenging him to claim the territory. We did so like lone wolves, like packless rogues, without the proper authority or direction of the holy and righteous Lycan Diocese.” He and the other Apostles knelt as one, became human, and offered their necks. “Our lives are yours, Eric Courtney.”

  “Fuck off.”

  La Bête nodded at my words and the Apostles jerked to their feet, changing forms as one. “You do not accept?” Deacon shouted now that he was all wolfed-out and tough again. “You mock me?”

  I’ve never met a big guy with such a clear-cut case of short man’s syndrome before. But that was Deacon through and through.

  “He mocks you because it is his right,” Megawolf snarled. “Just as it became my right to rule on this when you lost your head and chased a wronged party into my territory. I do not like vampires—I never have—but your discourteous lack of gratitude astounds me, Deacon. This vampire spared your lives when I delivered them to him as payment for the rules you knowingly broke, and you have the gall to object to the words he used when doing so?

  “I would almost offer you up again if I were not certain you would shame me with a further demonstration of your disrespect.”

  “Forgive me.” Deacon dropped to the ground and rolled onto his back, arching his neck up toward la Bête.

  “Return to him what has been stolen.”

  Deacon reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a small leather bag, then stood and walked to me, dropping the bag into my hand. “The bullets of El Alma Perdida.”

  “I took the liberty of releasing the spirits of the werewolves encased within,” said la Bête.

  “Whatever.” I emptied the contents of the bag into my hand. Each bullet felt lighter in my hand, a tiny difference, yet a noticeable one. Wasn’t it supposed to be glowing or something? Recharging? I dropped the bullets into my pocket, wishing I’d brought Magbidion with me so he could give them a onceover. “That was JPC’s deal anyway. Not mine. So? Now what?”

  “I grant you three nights’ time in my territory.”

  “Well, fuck you, too.”

  “Explain.”

  “Fucking?”

  “No.” La Bête’s eyes narrowed. “You’re rude and uncouth, but you usually have a reason. Why do you disdain my generosity?”

  “Because I’m here on my honeymoon and you just basically said that as soon as my wife is done with the stupid three-day ritual these assholes”—I indicated the immortals—“insist she completes, she has to leave without getting to spend any time in Paris at all.”

  “Oddvar, can this ritual be waived without difficulty?”

  “The moment she agreed to it in front of the Head of Scrythax, the ritual began.” He shook his head. “If she leaves early—”

  “Then she disqualifies herself,” la Bête interrupted. “You and your rules. I cannot deny they’ve
kept the vampires largely in check.”

  “If you were to agree to swear the Oath—”

  La Bête’s form exploded, chunks of flesh and gore spattering the room as his wolf form erupted from the human one. “I will not swear any oath by a demon!” Megawolf’s massive paw caught the fat immortal in the stomach, knocking him flat. The wolf’s teeth drooled blood onto Oddvar’s cheek as he growled. Flecks of cast-off skin dotted Megawolf’s black fur and he howled, even as his telepathic words filled our minds.

  “Five nights then,” Megawolf decreed. “As the ritual will still be kept, you shall be welcome here for five nights, during which time you and your bride may hunt and kill three humans each. I decline to allow you into the Treaty of Secrets. This should save you the trouble of refusing to swear on the demon head yourself. On the basis of my own authority, I decree that you shall have free rein to destroy the vampires of Europe as you see fit.”

  “That is not acceptable,” Aarika began.

  Luc joined his voice to hers. “Be reasonable, la—” He caught himself again. “You know the Council of Immortals cannot condone this.”

  “You broke your word to me.” Megawolf swelled up and howled again. This, I thought, must be what it’s like to argue with me when I’m angry. “I said no more Emperor vampires! And you let one in. Shall I take that act as dissolution of our agreement? Shall I interpret it as an act of war? Because I am ready. Are you?” His snout jutted toward Luc: “Are you?” At Aarika: “Are you?” And on and on to each of the immortals until every immortal in the room had turned away, unwilling to fight.

  “You didn’t ask me.” I couldn’t resist baiting him.

  “You’d say yes.” A hint of amusement accompanied his telepathic utterance. “Besides, I’m being magnanimous. You’ve been wronged and I’m making it up to you. Now, shut up.

  “I decree,” Megawolf repeated, “that Eric Courtney and his bride shall have free rein to destroy the vampires of Europe as they see fit. And the vampires of Europe shall have free rein, if individually attacked, to respond in kind, but only upon the Courtney who attacked them. As Eric is not an Oath-sworn citizen of Europe, the responsibility for keeping the mortals unaware of his and his wife’s presence shall fall upon the immortal community, which is to grant them both all courtesy as the Courtneys are their guests . . . and mine.”